A number of electronic devices include one or more computing devices such as one or more central processing units (CPU), one or more graphics processing units (GPU), one or more digital signal processors (DSP), and/or the like. The computing device, herein after simply referred to as a processor, executes computing device readable instructions (e.g., computer programs) and operates on data stored in one or more computing device readable media, herein after simply referred to as memory. To access instructions and data stored in memory, the processor may include one or more memory controllers and one or more memory interfaces. For example, a processor 110 may include a memory controller 115 and a plurality of memory interfaces 120-135 for accessing frame buffer memory 140-155, as illustrated in FIG. 1. It is appreciated that the memory interface may be separate from or integral to the memory controller. However, for ease of understanding, the conventional art and embodiments of the present technology will be described with regard to separate memory controllers and memory interfaces. The memory controller generally converts addresses in one memory space to addresses in another memory space. For example, the memory controller may convert logical addresses to physical addresses. The memory interface generally converts addresses in a given memory space to electrical signals to drive address, data and control lines, and receives electrical signals on the address, data and control lines, for reading and writing data and/or computer readable instructions to or from the memory.
The processor also includes a number of other functional blocks not shown. For example, the processor may include a plurality of processor cores, one or more communication interfaces, and the like. Processors are well known in the art and therefore those aspects of the processor that are not germane to an understanding of the present technology will not be discussed further.
The performance of the electronic device and/or the processor of the electronic device is determined by a number of factors, including the amount of memory, the speed at which the memory can be accessed, the power consumed, and/or the like. Generally, the larger the storage capacity the more the memory costs. Similarly, the faster the memory device is, the more the memory costs and the more power the memory device consumes. Generally, the processor and memory are not utilized at peak performance most of the time. Instead, most of the time the processor and memory are idle (e.g., standby or sleep mode) or have a low workload. In addition, a manufacturer may offer a plurality of models of an electronic device based upon a common device architecture. For example, a family of graphics processors having a common device architecture may include a first model that includes 4 GB of SDDR3 (double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory) memory operating at 1 GHz, another model may include 2 GB of GDDR5 memory operating at 2 GHz. Generally, the conventional processor and memory systems limit the ability to provide multiple models having a common device architecture that offer different levels of performance based upon memory storage capacity, memory access speed, power consumption, costs and combinations thereof. Accordingly, there is a continuing need for improved memory subsystems in computing devices such as central processing units, graphics processing units, digital signal processing units, microcontrollers, and the like.